Furniture Stores in Santo Domingo Dominican Republic
Brief introduction
Dominican Republic is a country that have it all including great quality furniture stores located in Santo Domingo and all around the country. DR have a wide variety of good quality local and imported furniture. Hundreds of local furniture store are distributed all around the country selling bed sets, dining sets, living room, mattress and all type of home appliances. This is the reason why we recommend to read this articule before you out to buy furniture in DR and is also a quick guide of All you need to know about the top furniture stores, industry history, summary and Dominican customers market preferentes.
Furniture Stores in Dominican Republic
First of all and in order to have the latest information and furniture ranking stores, visit the most important business directory in DR at livio.com. On this online business directory, you may find all furniture stores located mainly in Santo Domingo and other provinces, a brief description of each one including its website links.
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Furniture Stores Sorted by Popularity:
History of Furniture Industry in Domincan Republic
The furniture exists from the moment the man decides to leave the floor for the comfort of sitting on a stone or a fallen trunk. A sample corresponding to this stage in the evolution of humanity and parallel to the history of the Dominican furniture, is the hammock, hanging and portable bed, made from fibers of a tree, which is believed to adopt the name. Another piece of furniture developed by the Tainos was the duho, which was a kind of stool, made of stone or wood with geometric engravings on the top, four legs, the two front legs being shorter than the hind legs and with the head of an animal. In this one the chiefs sat down to rest, in squats, during certain ceremonies.
According to an article written by Arancha Toribio, from INTEC’s Industrial Design Centre, probably, after the colonization the Spaniards who settled on the island must have built some type of furniture surely based on the characteristics of the styles in force in Europe during that period, which must have been much coarser and rudimentary, due to the use of other woods and fabrics and the lack of skill of the local labour force. If so, there are no vestiges of such furniture, nor are there references to the development of any Creole style in furniture that combines the formal and artisanal characteristics of colonizers and colonized, probably because of the lack of artistic crossbreeding that occurred on the island due to the extinction of the indigenous population.
Likewise, there are no references to 18th century furniture either, and it is necessary to take into account the fact that during these two centuries the island was immersed in helplessness and decadence and that by the end of the 18th century, according to certain writings, the primitive character still prevailed in the furniture of the time.
Evolution of Dominican Furniture
Towards the decade of 1890, together with the changes that occurred in the economy, politics, social stratification, in the media, the organs of cultural transmission and even in the demography of the island, the Dominican furniture began to shed this rustic and primitive character that represented it. The Dominican bourgeoisie makes use of architecture and furniture in its competition for social status; the houses are furnished with imported furniture facilitated by the emerging and prolific importing companies that brought them on ships from Europe and the United States.
Starting from the fact that there is a notable introduction of foreign furniture in the country, it is that the national furniture industry begins to develop. From the middle of the 19th century onwards, design focused on trends in styles from past eras.
The Victorian style experiments in Europe great proliferation due to the eagerness of ostentation of the time and arrives to the country and the United States. The first wicker furniture arrived from England, but with the immigration of the Chinese colony during the Trujillo regime, factories were established in the country for its production.
Another very characteristic style of the Victorian is that developed by the German Michael Thonet, steam curved, and characterized by being light, flexible and durable, even becoming disassembled. This style was not so copied by local cabinet makers due to its advanced curved technique. Replicas of these can be seen in the Museum of the Dominican Family.
For 1920 models of French, English, Spanish and North American furniture begin to be adopted in their manufacture with Creole woods such as mahogany, cedar and spinillo, which, together with the reinterpretation of craftsmanship according to the resources and the intermingling of all these styles, generates in itself a new character in the furniture.
In an article published in the newspaper dated December 14, 1996, César Iglesias and Antonio Caren are mentioned as manufacturers, in San Pedro de Macorís, José Socías and Alfredo Hirlen, in Montecristi; William Charro, in Puerto Plata and Pascual Palacios in Santo Domingo. Palacios, of Spanish origin, established a sculpture and marquetry workshop in 1920, introducing a new aesthetic to the furniture, a product of the mixture between the Castilian Renaissance style and his own inspiration.
This is how the palace style imposed by the master Palacios arose. Trujillo, lover of the titles and symbols of power and his delirium of grandeur, made Palacios become the official cabinetmaker of the State. At that time Palacios was known internationally. It was he who manufactured the famous rocking chair used by President John F. Kennedy.
A second workshop is the Sabina furniture shop, initially established in Santiago and later in Santo Domingo.
Criollo Model
A much more Creole and popular model, which has practically disappeared, is called Mueble de Palitos, based on the transcendence of spindle-back chairs, made up of numerous turned sticks.
The Dominican style called Vernacle, which really has its origins in foreign furniture as well, is characterized by straight lines and little size. The most commonly used materials are mahogany, oak and straw. Legs straight, turned, cabriolé and claw-shaped. There is the Serrano model, simple, rustic and naturalistic. The best examples are the Serranas chair and rocking chair, in pine and guano fabric, which is intended to be defined as autochthonous furniture, but has its origin in primitive North American styles. It has been called Serranas because its greatest production is recorded in the Sierra de El Seibo, in the towns of San José de la Matas, in Santiago and Matanza, Baní.
The Art-Deco presence was present in the country in the 1940s. Today it is still maintained in the country by some manufacturers.
Furniture Industry Summary
In the Dominican Republic, most of the production of the furniture sector is dedicated to the domestic market, especially the production of woo
Nationally produced wood furniture is dedicated mainly to popular domestic consumption and a small part is destined for export, while imported furniture (which has a higher price and uses materials other than wood), are aimed at sectors with greater purchasing power. For this reason, the foreign supply has not displaced the internal supply of the sector.
From the point of view of supply, Dominican production is located in two main areas: outside the free trade zones (called national production) and inside the free trade zones.
The majority of furniture production takes place in the national zone, concentrated in the area of Santo Domingo and Santiago. It is estimated that production in the free zone would represent 1% of the country’s furniture production.
The Dominican furniture industry is mainly aimed at the local market. To a great extent, exports are not recurrent but sporadic.
Furniture Local Preferences
To have and idea of the local consumers preferences, bellow you may find a market research and analysis based on 50 surveys made to 50 final Dominican final consumers. Basically the following four questions were consider for this survey.
1. Do you buy locally manufactured furniture?
In the consumers consulted, it is very obvious the willingness of end consumers to buy locally manufactured furniture, 94% said they buy locally manufactured furniture, and the remaining 6% said they do not buy locally manufactured furniture.
36% of consumers responded that they had an income between $15,000 and $25,000 pesos per month. 34% indicated that they had income between $25,000 and $40,000 pesos. 18% reported that they had income between 40,000 and 90,000 pesos. Only 12% said they had income between 15 thousand and less.
2. What type of furniture do you usually buy?
27% said they usually buy living room furniture. 24% said they buy kitchen furniture. 20% said they buy canteens. Another 20% buy bedding and 9% buy bedding or mattresses.
3. How often you buy furniture?
60% of consumers interviewed said they buy furniture between four and five years, 24% buy every three years, 12% every two years and 4% every year. With these data we could infer that the rotation cycle of the furniture is mostly between 4 and five years.
4. What type of materials do you prefer for furniture?
38% of those consulted prefer furniture with precious exposed wood for their furniture, 26% indicate that they prefer furniture of synthetic material and 24% prefer furniture of solid wood, 6% indicate that they prefer wood of andiroba.
5. What style of furniture do you prefer?
44% of the consumers consulted indicate that they prefer modern style furniture, 38% classic style, 14% prefer new styles while 2% prefer minimalist, another 2% prefer vintage style. We can conclude that end consumers are willing to receive different styles to those already established.
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